When Sam Ellis killed two people with his car…

I was hitting a joint when I heard a car rage by my house. It was in the summer of 2015, sometime past midnight. Although the property had these tall, wooden fences blocking my view of the road, I could hear the engine roar with reckless abandon.

Living right off the street, I was familiar with the usual sound that a passing car made. This was not the usual hum that grew gradually into a crescendo before fading off into the distance. This was a demon ripping its way into our world, sudden and violent.

Then came the crash.

Underneath the night sky, with only the streetlights and the joint’s ember to light the scene, Mikey and I looked at each other. We shared a solid second of concern. Without exchanging words, we both shrugged and continued to get high.

About 10 minutes later, we heard an envoy of sirens rush pass my house. The red/blue and red/white lights bled over my fence, scorching the tree leaves with artificial luminescence. The sirens wailed and we could hear them for a while until they stopped.

Mikey and I walked off my porch to take a look. We could see some of the lights flashing but it was too far to see exactly what had happened. Perhaps, we would have been more curious if we weren’t so high.

But we were. So we looked at each other, then we shrugged. We walked back to my porch and drank some beers that we found at Mikey’s house earlier that evening.

A couple hours later, we were coming down from the buds and booze. Mikey had decided to go home.

“Hey, do you think that accident was serious?” he asked.

“It’s a long stretch of road,” I said. “It’s not too busy. Probably just a thrill seeker who lost control. They are probably okay.”

I learned the next morning that they were not okay.

“I think this is the accident from last night,” he wrote in a text. He had attached an article. When I opened the link, it was a photo of a car flipped upside down, with a trail of grass and dirt scrapped behind it. The car had broken through a wooden fence and ripped some bark right off the trees.

The headline said something along the lines of–

Two High School Graduates Dead in Drunk Driving Incident

They had apparently been drinking at a party. A big house in Potomac, where the parents had been known to let the kids drink as long as they did it in the house.

There were anti-driving measures in place. Sam Ellis found a way to get around this. By not bringing his own car, he didn’t have any keys to give to the parent in charge.

Later, the father of the house filled with underage drinkers, Kenneth Saltzman, was convicted for allowing the party to take place. The county also passed a law called the “Alex and Calvin Law”. Named after the two kids who passed, it was designed to make it easier to prosecute parents who knowingly let underage kids drink alcohol in their homes.

I would say that I agree but then I would be a hypocrite. I did a lot of my underage drinking in the homes of parents, both knowing and ignorant.

I think if I was a kid growing up in Potomac now, I would be a little more upset.

I would swear under my breathe, “God damn you, Sam Ellis. You piece of shit, making this harder for everyone else out here.”

That said, I’m 25 years old, able to buy a drink whenever I damn please. I also have no children. So this is also of little consequence to me.

In the next few days, I wasn’t one of the scores of people who came to the crash site later to offer flowers and a spiritual condolence. Despite the fact that it was only a 5 minute walk from my house, I never felt the urge.

I wasn’t at the school to participate in the collective grief of the students. At that point, it had been two years since I graduated. The thought of going back for any reason gave me the same repulsion as a high school reunion.

As for the students involved, I have no relationship to them. I recognize them as people who I saw in the halls but I never had a single conversation with them.

I had met Sam Ellis, the drunk driver, once in a parking lot with a couple of mutual friends. Even then, he had a reputation for driving despite having a suspended license. Luckily, he didn’t offer me a ride that day.

The kids in the car were all football players. In a stereotypical high school, this would be a big deal. At my high school, however, everyone knew that the football team was terrible. I always heard more about the soccer, tennis, and wrestling teams.

As of 2020, Sam Ellis seems to hold some sort of high school record for the entire state of Maryland. Too bad it was for a shit team. Too bad he was a shit person.

Despite all of these reasons to not give a shit, this is something I have thought about for 5 years. Not an everyday occurrence but more something that refuses to leave me alone. I still think about it a lot. Perhaps, it’s because I was there that night, separated only by a wooden fence and drug induced lethargy.

In a weird way, I was so close to it all.

As for Sam Ellis, he received a four year sentence, with a possibility of parole after the first year. Technically, he received 20 years but 16 of those got suspended. I read that as “Mom and Dad have some nice friends.”

In the papers, they talked about how he had changed in the 1 year between the manslaughter and the trial. One article talked about how he was regretful of his actions. Another talked about how he wanted to start his sentence early, a symbol of his willingness to change. Some articles wrote on the brain damage that he himself sustained and how it should influence his sentence.

I laugh thinking about how much of a bitch response that is, a pathetic flashing of privilege. Then, I get angry when I remember that it worked. Bitch is only serving a 5th of the sentence.

At times I think that I am too hard on Sam Ellis. He was only 18 or so when he did the manslaughter. I even feel bad for constantly referring to him as his full name, like he is some sort of classic villain from a western. I imagine he would make a great oil baron with a twisted up moustache.

When I consider giving him some benefit of the doubt, however, I also think about his phone calls from prison. I think about how he told his parents that he would make up some sob story to get brownie points in court. In another call to his sister, he said that if “it wasn’t for this bullshit…I would be having a lit ass time.”

Later, he would state that “bullshit” referred to his own actions. Even if I buy that, he still outed his MO: having a lit ass time.

This wasn’t the first time that he had been caught drinking and driving. In fact, it took three citations before he killed two people and an entire county of rich white people realized they had collectively fucked up raising their damn kids.

So, no: I don’t buy his sincerity. I don’t think that he had changed from the year between the manslaughter and the trial. I don’t think that his admission of guilt was genuine. If it was, then it would only be the start of a long journey towards redemption.

But I don’t buy it.

In a way, I do feel bad for him. Not everyone is born inherently good. Most of us have to try every day to be a good person. To get to that point of constant self-reflection is a journey in itself, one where a lot of the external conditions have to be just right.

Sam Ellis didn’t have those things. He was a rich white kid raised by rich white parents from a rich white county. Montgomery County is known as one of the richest counties in not just the state of Maryland, but the entirety of the United States. Those that lived here were either rich families that had settled there a while ago or hyper-competitive immigrants trying to guarantee their kid’s future. The school system offered the most AP classes that a high school could offer. The other programs and facilities were top-notch, especially for a public school.

My point is that he was raised like a prince in a town of princes. The bitch had no chance. So yeah, sometimes, I do feel bad for him.

Then I remember that he offed two people that he called friends and then complained about a drug withdrawal.

Despite my distance from the situation: Why do I care so much?

I guess the best way I can describe it is by sharing a memory I have from several years later. I was getting drunk with Corey. We were having a discussion when we descended into some passionate topics regarding race and economic status. At one point, Corey states with an impassioned emphasis—

“Where I’m from, People do terrible things because they can’t fucking afford not to. I have never heard of a rich person having to do that.”

He is right, of course. I wasn’t going to tell him that the lack of wealth is inherently a virtue. I have heard a lot of his stories and stories of others that tell me of the terrible things people do when financial duress takes over one’s soul.

But I also think of Sam Ellis, a person with a lot of money. It was enough to shave 80 percent of his sentence, possibly another 10 if he makes parole. I think about what money has done to this kid. Some may be so deprived of money that they act like junkies itching for the next dose.

Sam, on the otherhand, was overdosing. It sedated him. He no longer felt the souls of his fellow humans. Perhaps, he never did.

Last year would have been the four year mark of his imprisonment if he never received parole.

If I am being optimistic, I would like to think that Sam Ellis has changed. I would like to think that four years is plenty of time to reflect on one’s actions. I would like to think that he is now like the rest of us: living everyday with an internal battle over the fate of his soul. I would like to think that on most days, he contributes to the faction of good.

What really fucks me up is that even with this best case scenario, he had two kill two people before he got the point. Worse case scenario, he learned nothing and he simply killed two people.

[Story originally posted on www.dangerwonka.com]